It’s fairly easy to record your own action. To start off, go to the actions palette now click on the folder icon. This will create your own set.
Give it a name in the pop up window.
Now you can press the New Action icon.
Enter a name for your new action (ie. scanned in image size, color balance adjustment, etc.)
Now all you have to do is record your action by pressing Play. When you have completed all of your actions (going through your process as you would normally) you can press the Red circle Stop button. You can take your time when recording an action; it only remembers specific commands, not how much time it took you between steps.
Remember that an action is just a set of commands or steps that you would take within Photoshop (it can ‘record’ about anything you can do). You could record an action to make a simple 2 step image adjustment. By having it as an action in your actions palette, you can just open the other files and instead of having to go through the actual steps it would take to end up with the same result (same process) you can just press one button: Play (on your new action). An action is basically an automation step to simplify your workflow (for example if there’s a single process you find yourself doing on many of images); it saves lots of time.
Also by recording actions, you can later automate and batch files-many files all at once with the same action or sequence/process. This can save you HOURS of work.
Here just record a simple action as I’m doing. I’m creating an action called imageweb. Once I press record I’m going to the Image: Image Size and changing the resolution to 72 for the web.
Once I press OK the step will be recorded (and anything else I do in the dialog box such as change the image width) in the action step.
When recording an action you are actually doing the steps you would take on an actual open document and using that as your ‘master’.
Once you have completed your steps, just press stop.
Actions can be as simple as a one-step process but can still save you time (press one button).
Now open another image. With your actions palette open, select your action (just the name of it) which should already be there; and press PLAY.
This will run the action on the document you’re working on. Instant automation. You can see it's applied the same step that you recorded simply by pressing play.
As a basic Photoshop user moving on, be aware of this tremendous power. Actions can get really advanced with stops, etc. You can even create and run entire batches to create templates out of a folder of files. The possibilities are endless!
